To understand how humans react and adapt to economic change we need to study people who live in harsh environments. From war zones, natural disasters and failed states, to aging societies and the challenges of technological advancement, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or changed in some way.
People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages.
In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader off the beaten path to places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, Extreme Economies tells small stories that shed light on today’s biggest economic questions, with vital lessons for our future.
理查德·戴维斯（Richard Davies）。英国央行经济学家、伦敦经济学院研究员，曾担任英国财政大臣的经济顾问，以及英国财政部经济顾问委员会主席。他的文章曾在《卫报》《星期日泰晤士报》《泰晤士报》《1843》上发表。他也是慈善机构CORE的创始人之一。本书荣获：2019年开明经济学人奖，2019年英国《金融时报》和麦肯锡年度商业书籍 。
